Bear Alley Books has just published Action: The Sevenpenny Nightmare, a comprehensive history of Britain’s most infamous boys’ comic.
Back in the 1970s, for eight glorious months, fans revelled in Action, a comic that gave them the over-the-top action of adult TV and cinema unavailable to kids in their early teens, but visible all around them in cinema posters, newspaper articles and TV’s many news programmes: Jaws, The Sweeney, the Dirty Harry movies, Death Wish and Rollerball were out of the reach of children… but Action wasn’t.
Then, without warning, it disappeared…
Tabloid complaints and an excoriating interview on BBC’s Nationwide alerted IPC’s management to the moral panic building around the comic; pressure groups began to make their voices heard; and the Newsagents Federation and major distributors threatened to take action, just as IPC were launching new titles. Action vanished from the newsagents’ shelves and was frantically retooled and relaunched six weeks later in a neutered form that removed two featuring violent teenagers and stripped the rest of the paper of all politics, body horror or hooliganism.
Even the infamous “Hook Jaw”, a comic strip inspired by Jaws, was moved from the centre pages… and the blood was no longer printed red.
Action: The Sevenpenny Nightmare, the latest book from Bear Alley, delves deeply into the history of the paper, how a moral panic grew around it and how fans, the publisher and the tabloid press reacted to it. It looks at the changes made to the strips to make them acceptable to the paper’s critics and what might have been, with examples from the artwork and storylines of lost issues.
Available to order now, Action: The Sevenpenny Nightmare is currently available with an early bird discount of £26.49 including p&p until 24th March 2026. The book will be available on the Bear Alley Ebay store at the end of the month.
Orders can be made by Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk). Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. US orders (£29.49 sterling) can also be made via Paypal.
• Action: The Sevenpenny Nightmare | Published: 10th March 2026 | Format: A4, 179 colour pages, Paperback with matte cover
If you’re elsewhere overseas, contact publisher Steve Holland via the email address above and he will work out a price including postage
Head to Bear Alley Books for more information about their books
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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